Amid the dull claystone of a tube-shaped sample of rock, the gleaming, pulse-quickening swirl of gold is unmistakable.

"It's quite a special specimen of gold. It's by far the best visible section of gold we've ever intersected," said Tim Bourque, a geologist with Atlantic Gold Corp., cradling the metre-long sample in his arms.

The rock was gathered last fall at the firm's Fifteen Mile Lake property, one of four deposits it owns in Nova Scotia's old gold districts. The company hopes to eventually employ 350 people over at these sites.

The discovery of the precious metal in such unremarkable hunks of stone is helping to revive a dormant industry -- and Bourque hopes it will keep the company's Moose River Consolidated Project flourishing after its initial Touquoy mine starts up here in September.

The company said Touquoy will stamp out 87,000 ounces of gold in its first year -- each ounce currently worth over US$1,200 -- an indication of the potential riches that have drawn Atlantic Gold and other miners to the interior of the province's Eastern Shore region. ...

Hole DCH-001 intersected numerous intervals of oxide and sulphide mineralization that had a combined total length of 316 meters averaging 0.63 percent copper. Diamond drilling appears to have recovered the oxide mineralization better than reverse-circulation drilling, as noted by the interval from 5.7 to 61 meters. Copper oxide mineralization was found throughout the hole, including in the magnetite-rich zones. Most of the deeper intersections averaging greater than 1 percent copper were generally sulphide mineralization. The comparable diamond drill interval to the high grade intersection of hole CHR-002 was well-brecciated and resulted in it being mostly oxide mineralization containing reduced copper values. ...